Their clients, stakeholders, internal suppliers and teams had changed.
They all knew it.
They all knew they hadn’t invested any time on it as a department leadership team.
red10 ‘s Rachel Nuttall suggests an outside-in approach to shift mindset and stay “Future Fit”.
What can you uniquely do, that the world of tomorrow needs?
Becoming ‘Future Fit’ starts with some great questions like:
- What does the world of tomorrow need from you as a team that you cannot deliver as a set of individuals with your current strategy?
- What do you need to do as a team to meet these needs?
- What’s coming over the horizon for your team?
- What are the challenges that are not being spoken about?
- How can you look outside of your team, to the wider system you operate in – to your stakeholders, customers, partners, investors, communities – and understand how you can collaborate more to be successful in this new world?
So how can these questions be answered?
They’re best answered by teams, rather than by individuals.
With “the sum of the parts being greater than the whole” ringing in our ears, encouraging teams to look at
the whole environment they operate in when creating a strategy for the future will give so many more
benefits.
Today’s world is too complex for just one sole voice to lead the creation of the team vision, purpose and strategy.
Coach the connections between relationships
Professor Peter Hawkins refers to this as Systemic Team Coaching. The connections between the team, your suppliers, your customers, investors, communities and environments hold equal importance when coaching a team and helping them on the road to planning & performing.
These different stakeholders may all have differing needs, in Peter Hawkins words “they are holding different systemic needs” but bringing those voices into the room is key in knowing what your team needs to achieve, it’s strategy and targets.
A simple “Outside In” technique for your team to use
Create a compass style system diagram, with your team at the centre, and with:
- North: Governance and stakeholders
- East: Clients and customers
- West: Partners and peers
- South: Your own workforce of teams and suppliers
Brainstorm who the different groups are, under each point of the compass.
Break out into four sub-teams, each exploring one of the compass areas above.
Prioritize the top 2 or 3 groups in that compass area, for each group presenting back “What they need from us now” vs “What they will need from us in the future”
How red10 can help you
A red10 coach can help your team:
- Create their own Team SatNav to be Future Fit – 1-day of facilitation is like 3-days without it, and allows the team leader to actually be a leader rather than a facilitator
- Independently collect 360 stakeholder feedback beforehand
We know so well that today’s teams are so varied – international, virtual, executive, project or account
teams. This approach to team coaching will help you as a team to innovate out of the future, helping you to learn faster than the world around you is changing. It helps teams create a shared purpose so you can be more effective & productive in the organisation and in the changing world of work.
The global economy has changed forever. the era of traditional, hierarchical, market domination by dinosaur companies is coming to an end. Distribution is the new norm. ISMAIL, 2014